Q: SSD Blade Drive for "Classic" Mac Pro

Looks like I spoke too soon. I started looking into the risks of not being able to run TRIM and came across this hypothetical breakdown:

TRIM is an essential part of proper SSD housekeeping. Without it, the drive has no idea what data is live and what is deleted and therefore it has to perform all its background garbage collection on both live and deleted data.

Think about the implications of that for one moment. If you imagine editing a 10MB PowerPoint document over the course of an 8 hour day, PowerPoint will autosave 48 x 10MB files = 480MB of data. 470MB of this is deleted (only the last autosave is “live”), but the drive cannot know this without Trim. So your 1 file has generated half a gigabyte of data that the drive now needs to manage, reading and writing to create free blocks. 48 times the necessary amount of reading and writing to the SSD is cause by not having TRIM.

This is not a sustainable way to run an SSD.

That caused me to be a lot more concerned about going with the SM951 so I started looking at the OEM options on eBay and it looks like part # MZ-JPU512T (late 2013/early 2014) and MZ-JPV5120 (early 2015) are my only recent option's in the 500gb range.

Things get more confusing when trying to figure out if I'm better off with blades from MB Air's /MBP's or cylinder Mac Pro's. Are the blades in the cMP a better option for my 2010 Mac Pro compared to  what's in the Air and MBP?

I'm eyeing one pulled from a MBP (MZ-JPU512T/0A6) that claims 1gb write/read speeds which are amazing (was only getting 650mb/750mb with the OWC Accelsior), but can I expect this kind of performance with the drive in my 2.4 8 core 32gb ddr3 system?

Or am I getting all worked up over nothing? Should I just go with the SM951, use Cindori TRIM with kext signing disabled and be real smart/careful about what drivers I allow access to my system?

Nearing peak frustration. Thanks for any help!

Pulled units from MacBook Pro are rated quite a bit slower. They may be lower power, but that is not needed unless you found a way to run your Mac Pro tower on batteries.

Regarding TRIM -- the need is to reduce the number of deleted blocks from time-to-time, so that carrying that deleted data does not become a problem.

Installing in-line TRIM with TRIM Enabler accomplishes that very well. running a Disk Utility (Repair Disk) weekly from an alternate system that has TRIM Enabler installed does almost as well. Erasing free space with Zeroes is not as good a solution, but accomplishes some of the goal and can be used in a pinch.

The Lycom DT-120 will work and is not costly. If you get Samsung, buy this adapter; others (Sintech) will not work as they were made for a different type of blade

Can you elaborate? I was of the impression that this http://www.amazon.com/Sintech-Adapter-Samsung-XP941-MZHPU/dp/B00QZ0WMK0 was compatible. Is the Lycom somehow better/more compatible?

PS1, if the Sintech model states explicitly that it will work with the SP941/SM951, then it should. But Sintech makes a lot of cards and some are very similar to one another in appearance and do not always have clear model numbers depending on the source. Some will work only with the Apple-branded blades and will not work with the Samsung XP941/SM951. Bplus also makes an adapter. I said Lycom DT-120 because I know for a fact it works and there is less room in my opinion to get the wrong card when buying on eBay. Right now, though, the Lycom adapter does not seem to be available through domestic retailers (e.g., Amazon), so the new Sintech card could be a good alternative. Just double-check before you hit "buy."

Gina

The hatter, just to clarify, when you say "some Macs use slower PCIe 2x that caps out in the 400 MB/sec" range for writes, are you talking about the number of PCIe lanes (or SATA)? Because I do not believe PCIe 2.0 will limit speed to 400 MB/sec writes. It think it has a theoretical maximum around 1500 MB/sec, and I got 1428 MB/sec writes with a single SM951 tested with Black Magic in PCIe Slot 3 of my 2009 Mac Pro.

Incidentally, moving the same card to Slot 2 dropped write speeds to 736 MB/sec because of the controller on the blade. The otherwise-slower XP941 got 972 MB/sec write speeds in Slot 2.

The newer blades are made to go past 2000 MB/sec, but those speeds will not be possible with a single drive on the Mac Pro 2010 because of PCIe 2.0. I don't know of a way to upgrade this model to PCIe 3.0. You would be looking at a Hackintosh of some sort because you would basically need a different logic board, I suppose. I was able to break the 2000 barrier only by running (shudder) RAID 0, getting 2138 MB/sec write/2300 MB/sec read on a pristine drive testing with AJA.

Gina

Thanks for all your help Gina and everybody else for that matter. I finally decided to purchase a new 2015 512gb blade (SSUBX) off ebay, that was pulled from a MacBook Pro. I also went with the Sintech adapter I linked to above (12+16 pin) and I can confirm that it does in fact work with the 2015 blades. I'll update with Blackmagic speeds later today or tomorrow.

My question however has to do with whether or not I should format this drive in disk utility? I've seen third party SSD manufacturers recommend you format their drives before installing OS X, but am I running the risk of screwing up this Apple / Samsung drive if I format it, even though its new/empty?

whether or not I should format this drive in disk utility?

initialization consists of two parts: ERASE and PARTITION.

You should definitely ERASE, which will set the SSD to a known state and eliminate all deleted blocks. You should definitely Partition, to give the drive a GUID partition Map and a Mac OS Extended Volume. You may not be able to Install a System on it otherwise.

Some hard-cores suggest you deliberately leave a percentage of additional unallocated space on the drive. Since block-number allocation is dynamic, this will increase the likelihood that additional unused blocks will be available to avoid slowdowns.

¿What is the cause for your concern?

abfsc wrote:

 

Thanks for all your help Gina and everybody else for that matter. I finally decided to purchase a new 2015 512gb blade (SSUBX) off ebay, that was pulled from a MacBook Pro. I also went with the Sintech adapter I linked to above (12+16 pin) and I can confirm that it does in fact work with the 2015 blades. I'll update with Blackmagic speeds later today or tomorrow.

 

My question however has to do with whether or not I should format this drive in disk utility? I've seen third party SSD manufacturers recommend you format their drives before installing OS X, but am I running the risk of screwing up this Apple / Samsung drive if I format it, even though its new/empty?

I think the concern is more over doing the equivalent of a secure erase or zeroing all blocks. This is not done during a 'normal' format/erase/partition process. In order to use an SSD for Mac properly it is perfectly ok to do a normal erase/format but for different reasons I have seen advise against trying to do a secure erase. Either a secure erase will destroy the SSD according to some, or it will not actually do a real secure erase even if it remains working.

Yea I wasn't sure about the erase part because the HD icon on the SSD was the Grey Mechanical looking drive just like the drive that came installed with my Mac Pro. I was worried that if I erased it and it now became a yellow hard drive icon, like my external third party drives, that I'd somehow be messing things up. I told you guys I was a noob.

I ended up erasing + partitioning and it's been working phenomenal. Check the speeds below. I was at 60-70 with my mechanical stock drive, 500-700 with my OWC Accelsior E2, and now 1400+ with the SSUBX Apple/Samsung

I installed in Slot 3 for optimal speeds. I was experiencing a quirk when restarting/booting the machine where the SSUBX SSD wouldn't be detected in Slot 3. I'd have to hold command+R and then tell OS X to boot to the SSD, but that only lasted a day, and now it seems to have no problem booting to the SSD.

Thanks to everybody that replied and contributed to the thread. At the end of the day I wound up with a TRIM supported SSD that's more than 2x faster than what I originally had by going the OWC route. Also got a 3:2 ratio of GB for the money by going with a Apple/Samsung drive. Thanks again!

Pray tell, could these speeds be reached with the same 2015 512gb blade (SSUBX) and 12 + 16 pin sintech adapter in a 2008 3,1?

Probably. However, the 2008 Mac Pro has two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots and two PCIe 1.0 x4 slots. I believe you would need to use a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot to attain similar speeds.

Gina

Barefeets tested the Samsung 941 and reported that for the Mac Pro 3,1 (early 2008), one must use one of the 2 PCIe 2.0 x 16 slots (which are double width by the way); however, even on the 4 lane PCIe 1.0 slots, they achieved read/write speeds of 742/588 MB/s.  The 512 version of the 941 achieved 1170/950 speeds.  Supposedly, the 951 is much faster.

I'm anxious to upgrade, but can't get enough information to feel comfortable with a purchase.  The blade market is supposed to be coming on strong in the second half of 2015 and El Capitan is alleged to enable Trim on non-Apple SSDs.

It's all too confusing for the 3,1 as to which adapter and blade to use.  There are two widths of blades, different M2 interfaces, yadda, yadda.  Looking and waiting for clarity with dollars in hand.